"Well, my Candy Rabbit is gone, and I wish I could find him, and I'm awful lonesome without him," sobbed Madeline, and she was not happy even when her mother said she or Aunt Emma would buy her another.
And all the while the organ grinder's little girl had the Candy Rabbit. And that night, when the time came for Rosa to go to bed, she looked for a safe place to put the Easter toy. The little girl saw the big basket of the peddler in a corner of the room.
"I'll put the Candy Rabbit on one of the pin cushions in Uncle Joe's basket," said Rosa to herself. "He can sleep there all night. To-morrow I will make a little nest for him."
And the Candy Rabbit was so tired after all the adventures he had met with that day that he fell asleep almost at once, and passed a very pleasant night in the basket on the pin cushion, which was stuffed with sawdust, just like Dorothy's doll.
Peddler Joe was up early the next morning. He was up before either his brother, Tony, or the little girl, Rosa. Joe cooked himself some breakfast on an old oil stove, and then, taking his basket, he went out. He did not even turn back the oilcloth cover to see that his pins, needles, cushions and other notions were all in place. He felt sure that they were. And of course he did not know the Candy Rabbit was in his basket.
But there the Candy Rabbit was, in the peddler's basket, on the cushion.
"Dear me! what is happening now?" thought the Candy Rabbit, as he was suddenly awakened by being jiggled and joggled about in the basket. "Am I at sea? Have I been taken on a ship, and am I crossing the ocean?" For that is what the motion was like—just the same as the Lamb of Wheels felt when she was on the raft.
And Joe, the peddler, not knowing the Bunny was in the basket, carried the sweet chap farther and farther away.
We must now see what happened to him.